President Obama has cut a swathe through the Bush-era National Security Program, forcing the CIA to close its secret overseas prisons and ban harsh interrogation methods. Russia Today’s Anastasia Churkina spoke to Human Rights lawyer John Sifton, who reveals the truth behind CIA secret prisons – the controversy, the lies, the torture, and the blacked-out [...]
October 28, 2009 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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The Obama administration indicated in court papers it may appeal a federal judge’s ruling ordering the Justice Department to release portions of the transcribed interview between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the roles Bush administration officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson six years ago.
October 16, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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In a recent article, I examined the implications of an announcement that 75 of the remaining 223 prisoners in Guantánamo have been cleared for release. This came by way of a list posted in the prison, identifying the prisoners by nationality, and a statement by a military spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, who explained, “It was an opportunity to just provide better communication. There’s a lot of information out there and you get a lot of things from a lot of different angles. It helps put it in a more succinct context for them [the prisoners].”
October 13, 2009 | Filed under
World |
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I like to believe that, despite studying Guantánamo for four years, I still have a sense of humor, but last Thursday I lost it, after 258 members of the House of Representatives (including 88 members of President Obama’s own party) voted for an idiotic, paranoid and unjust motion proposed by Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ken.), which was designed to “Prohibit the transfer of GITMO prisoners, period” (those were his exact words).
October 6, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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Court papers filed by Obama’s Justice Department in July revealed that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were in contact about the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, including what is described as “a confidential conversation” and “an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President.”
October 4, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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Seven former directors of the CIA sent a letter to President Barack Obama Friday asking him to take the unprecedented step of personally blocking an investigation authorized by Attorney General Eric Holder into cases where agency officers and contractors allegedly exceeded legal guidelines during the interrogations of “war on terror” detainees.
September 19, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly struck another decisive blow to the credibility of the Bush administration’s detention policies at Guantánamo by granting the habeas corpus petition of Kuwaiti prisoner Fouad al-Rabia, a 50-year old aeronautical engineer and a father of four who had been accused of fundraising for Osama bin Laden and running a supply depot for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.
September 18, 2009 | Filed under
World |
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A month ago, rulings made by District Court judges in the habeas corpus appeals of prisoners held at Guantánamo seemed, for the most part, to confirm that the courts were uniquely placed to deliver justice to the prisoners after their long years of imprisonment, largely without charge or trial.
September 11, 2009 | Filed under
World |
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Col. Wilkerson discussed the long-standing rivalry between the Pentagon and the CIA, and how Donald Rumsfeld — albeit with the backing of Dick Cheney — infected the military with the kind of techniques authorized for use by the CIA on “high-value detainees.”
September 10, 2009 | Filed under
Nation |
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The Spanish newspaper Público reported exclusively on Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for implementing torture at Guantánamo.
September 8, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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